The Dam Busters

The successful RAF “bouncing bomb” attacks on the Ruhr dams in May 1943 have become an enduring part of the heroic record of that “last good war.” Here we have all the necessary ingredients (and adjectives) for a gripping war story: clear-cut good guys (the RAF) and villains (the Luftwaffe); a lone scientist struggling to convince a bureaucracy that his amazing new invention just might succeed where all conventional approaches have failed; desperate times on the home front; and a faint-hope, last-ditch attempt to cripple the enemy’s war effort with a high-risk night attack carried out by a fearless leader (Richard Todd as Wing Commander Guy Gibson) and his plucky crew. The Dam Busters (Anchor Bay DVD), Michael Anderson’s 1955 movie version of the attacks, is still considered a classic war movie, and despite special effects that look tame when compared to modern CGI sequences, the pacing of the film and the power of the story still make it work today. As a testament to its “classic” status, the film was recently remastered and re-released in Britain and there are rumours of a complete remake (with Peter “Lord of the Rings” Jackson’s name attached as producer), which is to begin filming sometime in 2008. Those new to this film may not know that George Lucas based a key scene in his Star Wars IV: A New Hope (1977) on the dam-attack sequence from The Dam Busters.